Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Lunar New Year Celebrative Food Stuff – Chinese Preserved Meats

Another batch of photos taken at Chinatown. I wanted to write about this temporary stall selling Chinese sausage and preserved meats outside CK shopping centre.

They comes in various types and sizes. Unlike Italian sausages or German sausages, Chinese sausages undergo additional stage of preservation air-dying, thus it does not need to be refrigerated.

This stall not only sells Chinese sausages, but they also sells preserved meats. The above picture showed huge legs of hams and salt-cured ducks.

What is this leg of ham for? It is called Jin Hua Ham or 金华火腿. similar to western ham in the way that it is cured with salt, but the texture is very different. It is not exactly chewable, very hard. Chinese do not just eat it directly, but very much use it for making stock.

Mind you, they are very expensive.

As with many Chinese stuff, the process of making Jin Hua ham dated long ago back to 900 years ago.

The banner wrote “Jin Hua Ham is a Chinese traditional food. It is most often used for making stock and in dishes. Favoured for its strong and savory flavour, Jin Hua Ham is a necessity ingredients for many exquisite dishes. Accordingly to records, it was developed 900 years ago during the Song dynast by this general named “Zong Ze”. He developed this ham coincidentally when trying to thank his subordinates during a campaign. Notably, the Ham was awarded first grade commodity at the 1915 World Trade Fair at Panama.”

Another type of cured meats – belly cut. Similar to Jin Hua Ham, they are cured with Salt and additionally in their oil, much like the process of making duck confit. They are usually steam together with rice.

Red-coloured pork sausage which is also known as Lup Cheong. Quite fatty as they are usually make with fatty cuts of meats. They had quite a strong favour – salty with a hinge of sweetness which I think comes from the Chinese wine marinate. They have a very nice aroma. I like them best in Claypot rice!

Black-coloured ones are another type of “Lup Cheong”, but they are made with livers instead.

I think these are preserved Chicken legs. Not really sure how they prepared for eating. To clarify, not all Chinese buy these food stuffs. I mean westerners would perhaps see Chinese as Chinese, but we are actually further differentiated into different groups of Chinese according to our dialects.

They are Cantonese traditional foodstuff.

Cured Duck. I began to wonder whether Chinese had a part in making Duck Confit. They might have similar taste. Who knows, maybe long ago, some French accidentally fried cured duck and invented duck confit. What do you think?

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